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Archdeacon Cotton, speaking of the Diocesan Records in Ireland, says that the Registry of Armagh presents a splendid contrast to the others. This repository (alone of all Ireland) contains a venerable and valuable series of registers of some of the earlier prelates, which happily have escaped destruction.' 'In consequence of the disturbed state of the province of Ulster during a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, most of the diocesan registers suffered the loss of their ancient records. Armagh was so fortunate as to escape this calamity.' The same high authority asserts that there seems to be no reasonable ground for doubting that this church was founded and endowed with its primatial dignity and pre-eminence by St. Patrick.' From these remarks of the venerable chronicler of the Irish Sees, we might expect a complete catalogue of the Primates of Ireland from the days of St. Patrick down; but when we turn to his complete repository,' we find that the ancient registers which he enumerates do not commence till beyond the middle of the fourteenth century-the first series being from the year 1361 to 1416. The Armagh line ought to be the backbone of the Irish Episcopal succession, but for 800 or 900 years there are no links to connect it with the apostolic founders. The most ancient seal of the See extant is that of Primate Dowdall, 1543-58. It bears the arms of the See, and in the middle under a canopy sits a bishop mitred; on one side is St. George, and on the other some other saint, probably St. Patrick.

it was inconveniently situated, constituted the parish church of Lisnagarvie, now Lisburn, the cathedral church. The same reason that influenced the King in removing the See from Downpatrick to Lisburn, should now influence the Queen in transferring it from Lisburn to Belfast. The superstitious veneration for antiquity with regard to ecclesiastical sites in the present day leads to the greatest absurdities, inconvenience, and waste of resources. Roman Catholics might be excused for having much more of that feeling than Protestants; but they have the good sense to imitate their ancestors, and transfer the head quarters of their church to the great centres of population and social influence. One of the absurdities of the old parochial system, too, may be seen in the capital of Ulster, where the parish of Shankill has a population of 120,000, the late vicar, its pastor, having an income of only £288, while numbers of district churches have been erected on every side.

CHAPTER IV.

ANCIENT MONUMENTS.

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THE uniformity which pervaded the ancient Religion of Ireland is something wonderful. Notwithstanding the gods many and lords many that received the worship and homage of the people notwithstanding the diversity of races inhabiting the island; the succession of invasions and colonies; the revolutions and civil wars; the rivalry of clans, and the number of petty sovereignties, as well as the absence of any controlling central power or supreme general government, either actually within the historic ages, or visible even through the dim vistas of fabulous antiquity, we find all over the country-from the great central plain to the highest mountain ranges that girdle the island and the surrounding isles that stud the Atlantic-the same style of religious monuments indicating the same kind of worship, everywhere manifest. The Round Towers, the Sculptured Crosses, the Sacred Rocking Stones, the Holy Wells, the Patrons, the Pilgrimages, the Festivals, all the same. And what is most extraordinary, these traces of ancient worship were found to be so numerous, so completely omnipresent, if I may use the term, as to indicate the existence at some time or other of a population that occupied the whole area of the country. Remnants of their primitive worship survived through all changes to the beginning of the present century. Since that time they have been fast disappearing. Precious monuments of stone, with undeciphered records, have been worked into new buildings or broken up to pave the roads; holy wells have been closed by the hundred; patrons and pilgrimages have been abolished, chiefly through the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy, in consequence of their demoralising effects; cairns, cromlechs, stone circles, temple-like barrows, rude pillar stones, and even the grand old sculptured crosses have been de

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molished; the ploughshare has passed through spots haunted by fairies and other supernatural things, by which the peasant dared not pass alone at night, and one stone or tree of which he dared not remove by day.

It may be safely said that no island in the world, not even Cyprus, was more rich in materials for the antiquary and the historian engaged in the study of the early civilization of mankind. Some of these are buildings which have been a puzzle for many centuries as monuments of skill and art, for the existence of which in such a place and among such a people it is extremely difficult to account; but which are so full of interest and so creditable to the country, that we should expect men of all classes to preserve them with religious care. Yet I find a very eminent man, Dr. Stokes, Physician to the Queen in Ireland, and Regius Professor of Physics in the Dublin University, complaining with just indignation of the wilful destruction' of these ancient monuments. He states that the landed proprietors, the clergy, the farmers, the new settlers, and the native peasantry, all lend their hands to the work of obliterating these old witnesses of the country's his tory.' And, Dr. Stokes adds, of the different classes engaged in this barbarism, the landed proprietors have been most to blame, because they are for the most part without national associations."

The vast stone circles in one district alone-Canrrwmore, County Sligo traced by Dr. Petrie and his associates on the Ordnance Survey, were originally 200 in number. They are now reduced to 100, quarried away for building, drains and road making. Dr. Petrie states that there is no such collection of Pagan monuments in the British Isles; in fact these exceed in number all that are in England and Scotland together.' The Ordnance Survey was intended to give a complete account of the country from the earliest times, and this task was accomplished to a certain extent with ability and care. But the Report was published for one county only, Londonderry, after which the staff was discharged, leaving in their office, Mountjoy Barracks, Phoenix Park, 400 quarto volumes of letters and documents relating to the topography, language, history, antiquities, productions, and social state of every county. Various pretexts were

1 Notes on the Life of Dr. Petrie,' Preface.

made for suddenly stopping the work, chiefly the cost; the standing objection when Ireland is concerned. Strange to say, this was done when an Irishman, Mr. Spring Rice, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when the Liberal Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister. Dr. Stokes has a singularly suggestive remark upon this subject. He says: 'It seems as if some strong, though concealed influence had been brought to bear on the Government in reference to the danger of reopening questions of Irish local history.'

However that may be, in the year 1860 more than 100 vols. of MSS. with 11 vols. of drawings, indexed and bound, were presented to the Royal Irish Academy. What history or science may gain from the consignment of the materials to that learned body it is difficult to say. It has a house, a library and museum, and a small endowment from Government. Dr. Stokes quotes (p. 106) from the Rev. Dr. Romney Robinson, Astronomer Royal, the highest scientific authority in Ireland, an opinion which is not so very favourable as to lead us to expect much from its patriotic labours. Dr. Romney Robinson stated that the Academy had been then in existence for sixty years, that it had published nineteen volumes of Transactions, had given considerable sums for Prize Essays, and had formed a Museum of Irish Antiquities. Yet, in all those nineteen volumes, the only part that could satisfy a reasonable mind was the " Memoir on the Antiquities of Tara," which was published as a specimen of the kind of information collected in the course of the Survey. I think,' he continued, with the exception of that, the result of their sixty years' labour in the study of Irish Antiquities has been almost worse than useless.'

This condemnation, by such an authority, ought to set people thinking. How are we to account for the signal sterility of the Royal Irish Academy? If the love of truth inspired its directors, if they had not pledged themselves to conclusions which facts failed. to support, they might long since have settled the question about the origin and use of the Round Towers, and might have spared themselves the cost of attempting to prove that the Irish Celts were great builders. This very memoir on Tara' might have convinced them of the contrary. Thomas Moore, in his History

of Ireland,' full of the spirit of his Irish Melodies '—and betrayed by his subject into the magniloquent style of Ossian—referring to the residences of the Irish kings, says: However scepticism may now question their architectural merits, they could boast the admiration of many a century in evidence of their grandeur.' Dr. Stokes says that this sentence is not unworthy of the philosophic historian!' But he admits, at the same time, that the Royal Palace at Tara must have been composed of wood and clay—for no stone houses or fortresses ever existed there. There is a Tuathda-Danaan Cathair, but the Celts never added a stone.' Now, if the most celebrated palace in Ireland, the grand residence of the monarch at whose court the kings and princes of the whole island were accustomed to assemble, taking rank according to their pedigrees, the other kings having palaces of their own attached to this magnificent temple of national justice,—if this building was made of wattles and mud, if, during twelve centuries, the Celtic sovereigns of the country never added a stone to the one which they found there, is it not absurd to make them the builders of the Round Towers, and the old temples of perfect masonry found in connexion with them? Surely if they could or would build with stone anywhere, they would have built a stone palace at Tara of the Kings.' I do not ask the reader to compare their wooden palace with the early architecture of Babylon, or Nineveh, or Egypt. Let him only compare it with what the Spaniards found in Mexico. It seems a bold thing to dissent from the Academy on such a question, after reading Dr. Petrie's essay, and the learned and brilliant works of one of the most eminent of its presidents, Sir William Wilde, whose splendid works Lough Corrib,' the Black Water,' and the Illustrated Catalogue' of the Royal Irish Academy, have won for him so much credit. But Truth is greater than authority.

There is a famous stone palace, or fortress, in the north of Ireland-Grianan of Aliacha Rath of beauteous circles,' or enceintes, as Dr. Stokes describes it. But the Dinnseanchus,' a topographical poem of the ninth century, records the names of the builders as having lived centuries before the Christian era. The Royal Irish Academy gave Dr. Petrie a special prize of large amount for an Essay (which they published in a costly form) to